Multi-videoconferencing is a service that permits to connection of three or more conference rooms, allowing a video, voice and data connection between all those participating in the session present in the rooms. Working groups belonging to several offices, physically separated even by great distances, can thus conduct technical meetings with no need to go on expensive trips.
The service is offered by using the rooms and the equipment previously designed for point-to-point videoconferencing, in which only two rooms are connected with each other so that the corresponding room is seen, thus simulating what occurs in a meeting between two groups seated at opposite sides of a table.
Typically, rooms are equipped with a meeting table, on one side of which are seated local participants, who come in contact with the participants present in the remote room by receiving their images through monitors present on the other side of the table. The room equipment is thus designed to collect video, voice and data information generated locally, and, through CODEC, to encode them so as to conveniently transmit them to the room where they are decoded and displayed in real time.
In multi-videoconferencing, on the other hand, each room is in contact with two or more other rooms. To provide a service identical to point-to-point videoconferencing, it would be necessary to connect all the rooms in a complete network and simultaneously display in each room what has been produced by all the others. Room equipment is generally not dimensioned to do this, both in terms of visual displays and in terms of decoding equipment, as both can normally process the flow coming from just a single connection. In any case, even if it were possible, the resulting performance would risk becoming irksome with the increase in number of rooms simultaneously connected.